Article taken from
Reflections on the Universal Declaration of Human
Rights:
A Fiftieth Anniversary Anthology
Published under the auspices of the Netherlands
Ministry of Foreign Affairs
Martinus Nijhoff Publishers, The Hague, 1998
By Hans Küng
Anyone who is interested in seeing human rights more fully
respected and more effectively defended throughout the
world must surely also be interested in achieving a change
of consciousness concerning human obligations or
responsibilities. These need to be seen in the context of
global challenges and efforts to establish a global or
world ethic, an ethic for humankind. By this I mean a
minimum basic consensus as regards binding values,
immutable standards and basic moral attitudes - a
consensus which can be accepted by all religions as well
as by non-believers.
Efforts to establish a global ethic (for which I laid the
theoretical foundations in my book entitled Global
Responsibility: In Search of a New World Ethic, published
in German in 1990 and in English in 1991) have received
widespread international backing in recent years. Two
documents are of particular relevance:
- On 4 September 1993, for the first time in the history of religion, delegates to the Parliament of the World's Religions in Chicago adopted a ''Declaration Toward a Global Ethic.''
- On 1 September 1997, again for the first time, the InterAction Council of former presidents and prime ministers called for a global ethic and submitted to the United Nations a proposed ''Universal Declaration of Human Responsibilities,'' designed to underpin, reinforce and supplement human rights from an ethical angle.
In the remainder of this essay, I would like to make some
fundamental comments on the relationship between human
rights and human responsibilities.
The Declaration by the InterAction Council is not an
isolated document. It is a response to the urgent calls of
influential international bodies for global ethical
standards, to which an entire chapter is devoted in the
1995 reports of both the Commission on Global Governance
and the World Commission on Culture and Development. The
same issues have been on the agenda for some time at the
World Economic Forum in Davos and also in the new UNESCO
Universal Ethics Project. They are also receiving
increasing attention in Asia.
Within these international, interdenominational bodies,
the contemporary backdrop to these issues is that
globalisation of the economy, technology, and the media
has also meant globalisation of problems (from financial
and labour markets to the environment and organised
crime.) What is therefore also needed is globalisation of
ethics: not a uniform ethical system, but a necessary
minimum of shared ethical values, basic attitudes and
standards to which all regions, nations and interest
groups can subscribe ? in other words, a shared basic
ethic for mankind. There can be no new world order without
a world ethic!
The Universal Declaration of Human Responsibilities
supports and underpins the Universal Declaration of Human
Rights from an ethical angle, as announced in the
preamble: ''We ... renew and reinforce commitments already
proclaimed in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights:
namely, the full acceptance of the dignity of all people;
their inalienable freedom and equality, and their
solidarity with one another.'' If human rights are not
being asserted everywhere that they could be, this is
usually for want of the necessary political and ethical
will. Even the most fervent of human rights activists must
acknowledge that ''the rule of law and the promotion of
human rights depend on the readiness of men and women to
act justly.''
Of course, it would be wrong to suggest that the legal
validity of human rights should be dependent on the actual
fulfilment of human responsibilities. The idea of human
rights as a reward for good behaviour is absurd - for this
would mean that only those who had shown themselves worthy
of the community by fulfilling their responsibilities
towards it would be entitled to enjoy such rights. This
would clearly conflict with the notion of the
unconditional dignity of the individual, which in turn is
a pre-condition for both rights and responsibilities. No
one is suggesting that certain human responsibilities must
be fulfilled, by the individual or by a community, before
any claim can be laid to human rights. The latter are part
and parcel of the individual, who is always, however, the
bearer of responsibilities as well as rights: ''All human
rights are by definition directly bound up with the duty
to respect them'' (V. Deile) While rights and
responsibilities can be clearly distinguished, they cannot
be separated. The relationship between them must be
described in differentiated terms. They are not quantities
to be superficially added or subtracted, but two
interrelated dimensions of humanity in both the individual
and the social sphere.
No rights without responsibilities. As such, this issue is
by no means a new one - it goes back to the days when
human rights were first ''invented.'' During the debate on
human rights in France's revolutionary assembly in 1789,
the following demand was already made: any declaration of
human rights must be accompanied by a declaration of human
responsibilities. If not, everyone would eventually have
rights and play them off against one another, but no one
would be aware of any longer of the responsibilities
without which such rights cannot operate. Today, two
centuries after the French Revolution, we essentially find
ourselves living in a society in which individual groups
all too often invoke rights against other people without
acknowledging that they themselves have responsibilities
of any kind. This must not be attributed to codified human
rights as such, but to certain erroneous developments
which have a great deal to do with them and which, in the
minds of many people, have led to a predominance of rights
over responsibilities. Instead of the hoped-for culture of
human rights, what we frequently see is a perverse culture
based on exaggerated claims, in which the original purpose
of human rights is forgotten. Equilibrium between
''freedom, equality and participation'' does not simply
''happen'', but must be re-established again, and again.
There can be no denying that we live in a society based on
rights, which often also presents itself as a ''society
based on legal rights'' or even a ''litigious society''
turns the state - the term has been applied to the Federal
Republic of Germany - into a ''judicial state'' (in the
words of the legal historian S.Simon.) Perhaps it is time,
particularly in our society with its overemphasis on the
law, that the legitimate insistence on rights should make
room for a new focus on responsibilities.
The worldwide occurrence of serious human rights
violations should make it especially clear to professional
human rights activists, who seek to defend human rights
''unconditionally,'' how empty any declaration and
formulation of human rights is bound to be in situations
where people ? and above all rulers - ignore their human
responsibilities (''It's got nothing to do with me!''),
neglect them (''My job is to protect my company's
interests!''), reject them (''That's for the churches and
charities to deal with!'') or dishonestly claim to be
fulfilling them (''We in the government / on the board of
directors are doing everything we can!''). The
''weakness'' of human rights does not, in fact, lie in the
concepts as such, but in the lack of political and moral
will shown by the responsible players. In other words,
effective assertion of human rights depends on an ethical
impulse and normative motivation! This is fully understood
by the many front-line human rights activists who have
expressed their advocacy of a global ethic in a separate
publication of their own. Anyone, who wishes to defend
human rights effectively should therefore welcome a new
moral impulse and ethical frame of reference rather than
reject them (to the detriment of his or her own cause.)
In many respects, the ethical frame of reference of the
Universal Declaration of Human Responsibilities goes
beyond that of human rights, which only indicate what is
right and wrong in certain specific areas. Indeed, the
Universal Declaration of Human Rights does not even make
such a comprehensive moral claim. This is why any
Universal Declaration of Human Responsibilities must
extend much further and aim much higher. The two basic
principles of the Universal Declaration of Human
Responsibilities alone provide a comprehensive yet
specific ethical framework for everyday practice, namely
the basic requirement that every person be treated in a
humane way and the Golden Rule ''What you do not wish to
be done yourself, do not do to others,'' not to mention
the specific requirements in the Declaration of
Responsibilities concerning truthfulness, non-violence,
fairness, solidarity, partnership, etc. Where the
Universal Declaration of Human Rights must leave open what
is and is not morally permitted, the Universal Declaration
of Human Responsibilities tells us - not as a law, but as
a moral imperative.
Whereas the Universal Declaration of Human Rights is
mostly phrased in ''anonymous'' terms, since it is aimed
less at the individual (who needs protection) than at the
state (whose power must be curtailed), the Universal
Declaration of Human Responsibilities, though also aimed
at the state and at institutions, is aimed primarily and
specifically at the people's responsible. Again and again
it refers to ''all people'' or ''every person'', and
appeals specifically to particular occupational groups
which bear a special responsibility in our society
(politicians, public servants, business leaders, writers,
artists, physicians, lawyers, journalists, religious
leaders, etc.) In this age of suit-yourself,
take-it-or-leave-it pluralism, such a declaration of
responsibilities undeniably throws down a challenge - at
least to all those whose sole standard of ''morality'' is
''as long as it's fun'' or ''as long as it helps me
fulfill myself.'' Yet the Declaration of Human
Responsibilities is not a new ''community ideology'' -
something the communitarians inspired by Amitai Etzioni
are wrongly accused of promoting. Whereas they are
certainly not out to establish a ''tyranny of consensus''
and to entirely relieve people of their individual
responsibility. The latter can more properly be levelled
at those who in this day and age, fatally misjudging the
current crisis, persist in claiming that a ''belief in the
value of selfishness'' or ''the virtues of non-orientation
and non-attachment'' should be our guide in tomorrow's
world.
Like the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the
Universal Declaration of Human Responsibilities is thus a
moral appeal, which of course is also intended to have a
legal and political impact, but not to ''codify''
morality. The Universal Declaration of Responsibilities in
not, as has been claimed, a ''blueprint for a legally
binding canon of responsibilities with a claim to global
validity.'' People should refrain from conjuring up such
spectres at a time when even the Pope and the Curia are no
longer able to impose their codified authoritarian moral
views even in their own immediate sphere (let alone in the
outside world); neither the declaration of the Parliament
of the World's Religions nor that of the InterAction
Council says anything about such controversial moral
issues as contraception, abortion or euthanasia. The aim
of the Universal Declaration of Human Responsibilities is
thus emphatically not legal codification, which is simply
not possible with regard to moral attitudes such as
truthfulness or fairness. Its aim is voluntary
self-obligation. In individual cases this can, of course,
lead to legal regulation, but a Universal Declaration of
Human Responsibilities does not in principle imply legal
obligations. What it does imply is moral obligations.
My concluding wish for the ensuing debate is this: that
there should be no false fronts, no artificially
constructed antithesis between rights and duties, between
the ethic of freedom and the ethic of responsibility.
Rather, we should seize the opportunities which may lie in
such a potentially historic declaration, should it ever be
promulgated. For it is not every day that statesmen from
every continent agree on such a text and advocate such a
cause. Above all, we should not be afraid of a global
ethic, which, if properly understood, can liberate us
rather than enslave us - can help us to be, and to remain,
truly human.